Solstice are pleased to announce the release of their 8th studio album, Clann, on April 4th, 2025 through specialist US label Progrock.com Essentials.
Voted Best Band in Prog magazine’s latest annual Reader’s Poll, and arriving on an exuberant wave of positivity created by previous albums Sia (2020) and Light Up (2022), both widely acclaimed within the prog community and beyond, Clann completes the most recent phase of Solstice’s 40-plus year career. As band founder, composer, and guitarist (winner of Prog magazine’s most recent Best Guitarist Prog Award) Andy Glass explains, “[Sia] made me realize the potential and by the time we were working on Light Up the whole band had raised its game. I believed then that a trilogy of albums was what it would take to create our best work and track that journey. Clann is the final album in the Sia Trilogy and it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. Let’s hope the universe likes it too.”
As Solstice keyboardist Steven McDaniel laughingly confesses “It’s terrifying to be in a band this good!” Boasting the same line-up since 2020, the members of Solstice channel their impressive individual talents to create music that melds elements of hi-intensity prog-folk, soaring new age, fragile ambiance, fresh funky pop-rock with world music leanings, and fist-pumping heavy rock jubilance, demonstrating a sophisticated, multifaceted modernity while retaining transcendent timeless qualities. A lauded singer-songwriter in her own right, Ebony Buckle, backing vocalist and now solid member of the Solstice family, reflects, “I love how these new songs feel like they’ve always existed.”
Enjoying both an artistic and commercial rebirth over the past 5 years, Solstice owe much to the addition of young singer Jess Holland in 2020, who brought with her not just a clear emotive voice that communicates both stridency and tenderness with equal ease and charm, but a beguiling energy that has directly impacted everyone in the band. As Andy Glass is eager to explain “Sia was our first album with Jess and what a total game changer that was. I’ve felt incredibly motivated and inspired ever since. Since then I seem to have this relentless appetite to take this music as far as we can. There’s nothing quite like feeling that kind of drive.”
Recorded both in a variety of recording studios and by individual band members at home, Clann includes a first in the band’s career with the track Plunk which features a brass section recorded at the beautiful Grand Chapel Studio in Toddington, Bedfordshire. Glass admits that “there might be a bit of a Big Big Train influence there somewhere!”
Clann manages to cover a great deal of musical ground in its nearly 40-minute running time. Firefly opens up proceedings and will be familiar to many already through its airing at numerous gigs and its inclusion on both the band’s Live At The Stables and Return To Cropredy releases. Its pulse-pumping energy, hard-edged yet infectious grooves, whirling bursts of synth and violin and its glorious guitar solo lift the spirit and sweep us into Solstice’s mesmerizing world. Elsewhere Life delivers smooth, soulful, modern pop with an elegant dance-friendly heart and Plunk is taut swaggering funk in 7/8 with brass stabs and a left-field, gritty guitar solo. Frippa is built on an urgent, bluesy Crimson-esque riff in 5 and spotlights organ, violin and even more incendiary guitar. Final track, the 14-minute Twin Peaks, in some ways harks back to what prog polymath and longtime Solstice fan Steven Wilson once described as the band’s “spacey and spacious” early material – it’s gentle, reflective and airy with pastoral, folky strains, yet builds into a soaring expression of rapturous celebration and spiritual freedom.
Lyrically, the album continues established Solstice themes of love, joy, peace, harmony and acceptance, yet Clann admits that not everything in the garden is always rosy. Although longing for some ultimate redemption, both Plunk and Frippa feature a level of reproach for unidentified liars and cheats with Plunk even exercising some wry schadenfreude at the downfall of the song’s antagonist.
Check out the video for the first single “Firefly” here:
Solstice will be supporting the release of Clann with a strings of live dates including festival appearances in the UK, Europe and North America. The band’s live work has been fundamental to their growing popularity with a wide audience demographic. Always more than just a magical musical experience, the band’s gigs are consistently celebratory, invigorating, warm-hearted and a lot of fun. The live work has fed directly into Andy Glass’s writing – “One of the joys of this beautiful band is the energy on stage… and that’s definitely played into the writing for this album. I only need to think about the gigs to imagine the possibilities and for the ideas to start forming.”
Pre-order ‘Clann’ here:
CD: https://essentials.progrock.com/product/solstice-clann/
Colored Vinyl: https://fairsound.com/product/solstice-clann-rusty-red/
Black Vinyl: https://fairsound.com/product/solstice-clann-black/
Clann Track List
1.Firefly
2.Life
3.Plunk
4.Frippa
5.Twin Peaks
All songs written by Andy Glass
Solstice line-up
Andy Glass – Guitars, backing vocals
Jenny Newman – Violin
Pete Hemsley – Drums
Jess Holland – Lead vocals
Robin Phillips – Bass
Steven McDaniel – Keyboards
Ebony Buckle – Backing vocals
Dyane Crutcher – Backing vocals
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